The Activist

Issue date: 6/2/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: Amber Wooten A nail is embedded in the neck of a victim of a suicide bomb attack.

In a time when daily news reports of terrorist bombings can leave people numb to the trauma of the injured, photographer Diane Covert has put a spotlight on the civilian victims of terrorism. She has assembled a collection of X-rays and CT scans of people who were out eating pizza, riding a bus home from work, or dancing at a wedding when their lives were forever changed by a terrorist's bomb.

Covert's exhibit, "Inside Terrorism: The X-Ray Project," opened in the lobby of the SAHB here at Raymond Walters College on May 15, one of many stops on a national tour that has included shows in Boston and Baltimore. It runs through May 30 in the lobby of SAHB on the RWC's campus, but RWC officials are trying to keep it here through the end of June.

The images pack a powerful message, not through blood and gore, but by their simplicity. One shows the watch worn by a suicide bomber that ended up embedded in the neck of a victim. Another shows hex nuts that ended up in someone's pelvis. These are the stories of real people who have survived terrorist attacks.

Covert emphasized that, although she obtained these images from the two largest hospitals in Jerusalem, her exhibit transcends nationality, religion, and gender.

"They represent a broad cross-section of humanity," she said on the project's Web site. Terrorism's victims are commuters on the London underground and the trains of Madrid; they are celebrants at a wedding in Amman, Jordan, and a bat mitzvah in Hadera, Israel; and they are workers in the World Trade Center in New York City. "The victims of terrorism, worldwide, are ordinary people going about their lives," she said.

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